NucNews December 1, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- australia States urged to lift uranium mining ban December 1, 2006 Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/States-urged-to-lift-uranium-mining-ban/2006/12/01/1164777754676.html A federal parliamentary committee is calling on the states to lift their bans on uranium mining, saying billions in potential exports are under threat. The House of Representatives committee, which will officially release its report on Monday, has suggested examining the viability of nuclear leasing, The Australian newspaper reports. Under a leasing scheme Australia would provide uranium to foreign countries and then take back the waste. The industry and resources committee also raises the possibility of establishing nuclear enrichment plants, using licensed technologies from nations such as France. A national communications and education strategy was also needed to dispel myths about nuclear energy, the two-year committee study concluded. Three Labor MPs on the panel have endorsed the report, despite Opposition Leader Kim Beazley's strong opposition of a nuclear future. Australia has almost 40 per cent of the world's uranium reserves but only accounts for 23 per cent of global production. -------- britain Cut Trident by 50%, say Lib Dems MPs are to vote on plans for Trident next year Friday, 1 December 2006 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6199278.stm Britain's nuclear weapons capability should reduced by half, retaining only 100 warheads, the Lib Dems say. Sir Menzies Campbell said a decision on the Trident system should be made after 2014 when a clearer picture of nuclear threats and proliferation is known. But by cutting the number of warheads now, Britain would show that "nuclear disarmament is back on the international agenda," he said. A white paper outlining options for replacing Trident is due on Monday. Sir Menzies said the party was "in favour of the most cost effective replacement for the current Trident system being a submarine system based on the Trident missile of three boats carrying no more than 24 warheads each". He said the party believed that any deterrent should be at a minimum level, and 100 warheads was enough to ensure Britain's security. "There is a measurable danger that if North Korea and Iran are confirmed over the next decade as nuclear states, they will set in train a course of nuclear proliferation which will materially alter the strategic situation. "It would be unwise at this time for Britain to abandon its nuclear weapons altogether. "But a deterrent of approximately half the current size, and extending the life of the current submarine system, would be sufficient to provide for Britain's ultimate security until we have more certainty about proliferation," Sir Menzies said. The Lib Dems will debate the nuclear issue at their spring conference. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown have both indicated they want to see the UK keeping its own nuclear weapons system. Although there have been reports of some disagreements in Cabinet, ministers are to outline their favoured option - expected to be a replacement for the Trident system - in the white paper. There will then follow a three-month consultation on the plans and a vote by MPs in the House of Commons. Anti-nuclear campaigners say they fear the government has already decided to go ahead with replacing Trident. Critics say the cost of replacing Trident - estimated at up to £25bn - would be better spent elsewhere, particularly as nuclear weapons would be useless in the fight against international terrorism. Ministers want a quick decision to ensure any replacement is ready when Trident's working life ends in 2024. Britain has 16 Trident missiles based on each of the four nuclear submarines. TRIDENT MISSILE SYSTEM Trident Missile length: 44ft (13m) Weight: 130,000lb (58,500kg) Diameter: 74 inches (1.9m) Range: More than 4,600 miles (7,400km) Power plant: Three stage solid propellant rocket Cost: £16.8m ($29.1m) per missile Source: Federation of American Scientists How Trident works http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4438392.stm Fact file: Trident missile Monday, 4 December 2006 Trident II D5 is a submarine-launched ballistic missile system that constitutes the UK's nuclear deterrent. Developed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the United States, Trident entered service with the Royal Navy in 1994, 14 years after it was selected as the replacement for the submarine-launched Polaris missile. Each Trident missile has a range of more than 4,600 miles (7,400km) and is accurate to within a few feet. Their destructive power is estimated as the equivalent of eight Hiroshimas. The UK deploys 16 Trident missiles on each of its four Vanguard-class submarines, of which one is on patrol at all times. The fleet is based at Faslane in Scotland. A further 70 missiles can be accessed from a communal pool at the Strategic Weapons facility in Georgia in the United States, where the missiles are also periodically serviced. Each Trident missile is designed to carry up to 12 nuclear warheads, but the Royal Navy's are armed with three after the 1998 Strategic Defence Review imposed a limit of 48 per submarine. All the UK's warheads are built at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire. Launch sequence During a Vanguard patrol, the missile payload is carried upright in launch tubes behind the submarine fin, or conning tower. At launch, the pressure of expanding gas in the tube forces the missile out and to the ocean surface where, once it is far enough from the submarine, the solid fuel in the first of three stage motors ignites. At the same time, an aerospike designed to reduce drag by around 50% extends from the tip of the missile. The internal guidance system takes a reading from the stars to work out the missile's position and make any adjustments necessary to the pre-programmed route to its target area. A second - or boost stage - rocket then fires, followed by the third stage. Within approximately two minutes from launch the missile is travelling at over 20,000ft (6,100 metres) a second. Warhead detonation Once in position over its targets, the missile's third motor separates from the forward section containing the warheads. The guidance system takes another star reading to confirm its position. Small thruster rockets then manoeuvre the forward section so each warhead can be individually released in the right place to freefall to its target, where they detonate according to one of a number of pre-set fuse options. In the UK, the authority for a real (rather than test) Trident launch would have to come from the prime minister via a secure communications network. Trident has a 30-year lifespan that is due to end in 2024. The UK will need to take a decision soon on whether to extend Trident's lifespan or replace it with an alternative system, which could cost an estimated £10bn. ---- Nuclear stockpiles cut to placate Trident opponents By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent 01 December 2006 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2029290.ece Tony Blair is preparing to cut stockpiles of nuclear weapons when the Government presses ahead with plans to replace Britain's Trident missile system. Ministers are expected to indicate that Britain will reduce its nuclear arsenal to reaffirm its commitment to the arms control process despite ordering a new generation of atomic weapons. Ministers believe they can set an example by reducing Britain's arsenal and demonstrate that the country is "going in the right direction" on arms control, while justifying retaining a "minimum" nuclear deterrent on long-term security grounds. But a final decision on any future warhead numbers could be delayed. Mr Blair will publish the Government's White Paper on the nuclear deterrent on Monday with a personal statement to MPs after a special cabinet meeting to approve the proposals. They are widely expected to include replacing the ageing fleet of Vanguard nuclear missile submarines and US-built Trident missiles with a submarine-launched weapons system. Britain currently holds fewer than 200 nuclear warheads after a series of reductions in the Government's nuclear stockpile since the height of the Cold War in the past 30 years. Yesterday, the former Home Secretary Charles Clarke became the most senior Labour figure to express public doubts about replacing Trident, saying he was "extremely sceptical" that Britain needed to replace the system. "Trident was an expensive weapons system developed in the Cold War to meet the conditions of the Cold War, which ended 17 years ago," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. "It is still capable of functioning for about another 15 years." MPs are gearing up for a battle over the decision, with some Labour backbenchers predicting that up to 100 would defy the whips over Trident. But Jack Straw, the Leader of the Commons, said he was not expecting a big rebellion. ---- Radiation Poison Reportedly Found in 2nd Man By SARAH LYALL December 1, 2006 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/world/europe/01cnd-spy.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=397af4f08e16a748&hp=&ex=1165035600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin LONDON, Dec. 1 — One of three men who last met the former K.G.B. officer Alexander V. Litvinenko before he fell fatally ill with radiation poisoning was himself admitted to a London hospital on Friday, the authorities said, after tests showed that he had a significant amount of radioactive material in his body. The hospitalization of the man, an Italian investigator named Mario Scaramella, adds a further layer of confusion to the puzzle surrounding the death of Mr. Litvinenko, a vocal critic-in-exile of the Russian government. Although tests have been conducted on dozens of people who came into contact with Mr. Litvinenko after he fell ill — including the doctors who treated him — Mr. Scaramella is so far the only one to show more than a negligible amount of radiation in his body. The Health Protection Agency, which deals with public health issues in Britain, also said yesterday that “an adult member of Mr. Litvinenko’s family” who was in close contact with him during his illness — a description that apparently applies only to his wife — had tested positive for low levels of radiation exposure. But the agency added, “The levels are not significant enough to result in any illness in the short term.” Mr. Scaramella has said all along that he felt fine, that he was suffering from none of the debilitating symptoms that characterized Mr. Litvinenko’s illness and that earlier tests for polonium 210, the isotope that killed Mr. Litvinenko, had turned up negative. University College Hospital, where he was admitted on Friday, said that Mr. Scaramella was “currently well and shows no symptoms of radiation poisoning.” Dr. Keith Patterson, a consultant hematologist at the hospital, said that while tests had shown the presence of polonium 210 in Mr. Scaramella’s body, they were “at considerably lower levels than Mr. Litvinenko.” The health agency would not say how much radiation Mr. Scaramella had ingested, only that he had “a significant quantity” of polonium 210 in his body. Mr. Scaramella’s lawyer, Sergio Rastrelli, said in Rome that his client was undergoing more tests. Mr. Litvinenko’s body underwent an autopsy today at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, a hospital spokeswoman said. The autopsy, which might help reveal how the radiation entered his system and in what quantities, was presided over by a forensic pathologist appointed by the Home Office. An independent pathologist was also present, as well as a third who had been hired by Mr. Litvinenko’s family. The results of the autopsy may not be available until next week. All the pathologists wore protective clothing. Alex Goldfarb, a close friend of Mr. Litvinenko who has emerged as a family spokesman, said that he had been told that his friend’s body would have to be sealed in an airtight container and that it was so contaminated with radiation that it could not be cremated for 22 years. With each new development, there are more mysteries to be solved in the case, which has still not been characterized as a murder by the London police. Who gave Mr. Litvinenko the polonium 210? Where did they get it? How much was he given? How did he ingest it? What is the significance of the traces of radiation that have been found in at least a dozen places, including on two British Airways jets? Two Russian men who also met with Mr. Litvinenko on the day he fell ill had traveled on the planes. Mr. Scaramella’s role is also something of a mystery. Mr. Scaramella was a consultant for a Parliamentary commission in Italy looking into reported connections between the K.G.B. and Italian politicians. In the process, the group — the Mitrokhin Commission, which had been created during the premiership of Silvio Berlusconi — created dossiers on a number of opponents of Mr. Berlusconi, including the present prime minister, Romano Prodi. It was disbanded earlier this year. Mr. Litvinenko also worked for the Mitrokhin Commission, Mr. Goldfarb said, and had known Mr. Scaramella for a decade. The two met regularly in London. Their last meeting took place at the Piccadilly branch of the Itsu sushi restaurant on Nov. 1, the day Mr. Litvinenko became sick. Flanked by bodyguards in Rome last month, Mr. Scaramella told reporters that during the meeting — in which he drank water and Mr. Litvinenko ate sushi and soup — he presented Mr. Litvinenko with e-mailed documents showing their names on a list of people whose lives were in danger from Russian criminals. Mr. Scaramella said the same criminals had killed Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist, in Moscow in October. Mr. Scaramella has been in London for the last week. He said that he and Mr. Litvinenko were friends and that he was not a suspect in his poisoning. Mr. Litvinenko himself said on his deathbed that he believed forces working for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin were responsible, a charge the Kremlin has dismissed. Mr. Goldfarb said that his friend was certain he had been poisoned during one of two meetings on Nov. 1 — either the one at Itsu, or another, with the two Russian men, at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair. “It’s mystery over mystery over mystery,” he said. Of the news that Mr. Scaramella had tested positive for radiation, Mr. Goldfarb said, “Obviously he received a much lower dose than Alexander. He might have been an innocent bystander; he might have been a target; he might have been someone who the perpetrators contaminated after the fact, or he may himself be involved. Nobody knows.” ---- Former Spy's Wife Positive for Radiation By DAVID STRINGER Associated Press Writer December 1, 2006 http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ap/story.asp?AP_ID=D8LO9TUO0 LONDON — The wife of an ex-KGB agent fatally poisoned in Britain and the Italian security expert he met the day he fell ill both showed traces of the same radioactive substance found in the dead man's body, friends and officials said Friday. The inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko widened with the new positive test results, the evacuation of a hotel in southern England, and the sweep of an Irish hospital that treated a Russian opposition leader for what his aides described as poisoning. In Italy, the government sought to reassure the public there was no danger. The Italian, Mario Scaramella, was hospitalized in protective police custody after tests confirmed he had been exposed to polonium-210, the rare isotope found in Litvinenko's body before he died Nov. 23. The Italian's father, Amedeo Scaramella, said by telephone, "my son has been poisoned." He said he was too distraught to talk and hung up. Scaramella was exposed to a much lower level of radiation than Litvinenko, doctors treating him at London's University College Hospital said. He has shown "no symptoms of radiation poisoning," hospital spokesman Keith Paterson said. Litvinenko's wife, Marina, was also "very slightly contaminated" by the radioactive substance found in her husband's body, the former KGB agent's friend, Alex Goldfarb, told The Associated Press. He said she did not need medical treatment. Home Secretary John Reid confirmed that a member of Litvinenko's family had tested positive for signs of polonium-210, but he did not name the person. Pat Troop, chief executive of Britain's Health Protection Agency, said the relative faced a "very small" long-term health risk. Litvinenko died Nov. 23 at a London hospital and pathologists, wearing protective suits and face-covering helmets to guard against radiation, began an autopsy Friday. Results were not expected for several days. At the Nov. 1 meeting at a sushi restaurant with Litvinenko, Scaramella discussed an e-mail he received from a source naming the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist and Kremlin critic who was gunned down Oct. 7 in Moscow. The e-mail reportedly said Scaramella and Litvinenko were also on the hit list. In a letter released Friday by human rights activists, a former Russian security officer _ now jailed _ said he had also warned Litvinenko about a government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him and other Kremlin opponents. Litvinenko, 43, a Kremlin critic who lived in Britain, died at a London hospital. In a deathbed statement, he blamed President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning _ charges the Kremlin rejected as "sheer nonsense." "Back in 2002, I warned Alexander Litvinenko that they set up a special team to kill him," the former security services officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, wrote in the letter dated Nov. 23 _ the day of Litvinenko's death. The letter was released by rights activists in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, the center of the Ural Mountains province where Trepashkin is serving his four-year sentence. Its authenticity could not immediately be confirmed. A spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service, the KGB successor agency known by its Russian acronym FSB, refused to comment on Trepashkin's claim. Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 and convicted on charges of divulging state secrets while investigating allegations of FSB involvement in apartment bombings that killed about 300 people in Moscow and two other cities in 1999. The government blamed the explosions on Chechen-based rebels, but Litvinenko and other Kremlin critics alleged they were staged as a pretext for launching the current Chechnya war. The FSB, where both Trepashkin and Litvinenko worked, alleged that Trepashkin had been recruited by British agents to collect compromising materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting the Russian security agency. Trepashkin said in his letter that after his arrest authorities put him in a cell contaminated with poisonous chemicals and threatened to kill him. "Litvinenko and I aren't the last in this chain of victims of persecution," he wrote. "Maybe Litvinenko's death could make you believe in what he was saying." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was ready to answer concrete questions from Britain concerning Litvinenko's death, Russian news agencies reported. "When the questions are formulated and sent through the existing channels, we will consider them thoroughly," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Now the ball is on the English side, and everything depends on the British investigators." In Ireland, meanwhile, authorities tested Dublin's James Connolly Memorial Hospital, which treated former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar after he became violently ill during a conference last week _ an incident his aides have described as another poisoning. Irish health officials said tests were carried out to gauge any risks to public health, but said they found no traces of radiation. Gaidar, 50, who served briefly as prime minister in the 1990s and is one of the leaders of a liberal opposition party, began vomiting and fainted during a conference in Ireland on Nov. 24. His daughter, Maria, said in Moscow that his life was no longer in danger and he was slowly recovering. "It seems to me that it's probable that he was poisoned. I think that it could be somehow connected with Litvinenko, I don't know how, but it seems so strangely connected in the time and even geographically connected," she told AP Television News. Irish police have launched an inquiry into Gaidar's illness, but they said the investigation was routine and should not worry the public. "Tracing the movements of the subject and establishing the facts is the focus" of the investigation, police said. Traces of radiation have been found at a dozen sites in Britain and five jetliners were being investigated for possible contamination. A hotel in Sussex, southeastern England, was briefly evacuated Friday as police and health workers carried out tests for polonium-210. The hotel, set in 186 acres of countryside, had been visited by Scaramella after he met with Litvinenko, authorities said. It was later reopened. "Police said they found nothing of any concern," said Graeme Bateman, the hotel's managing director. Traces of radiation were found on three British Airways planes that have traveled the Moscow-London route since Nov. 1. In 1998, Litvinenko publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. He spent nine months in jail from 1999 on charges of abuse of office but was later acquitted and sought asylum in Britain. Trepashkin's letter also mentioned official targeting of Berezovsky. AP writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow; Sheila Flynn in Dublin, Ireland; Frances d'Emilio in Rome; and Tariq Panja, Katie Fretland and Maria Hegstad in London contributed to this report. ---- 'A NEW BOMB.. AN OLD FIGHT' Clarke's nuke blast By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent r.prince@mirror.co.uk 1 December 2006 UK Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=%2Da-new-bomb%2D%2D-an-old-fight%2D%26method=full%26objectid=18190271%26siteid=94762-name_page.html EX-HOME Secretary Charles Clarke yesterday warned that updating the UK's nuclear arsenal risked wasting £20billion on a defence we no longer need. Mr Clarke, the most senior Labour figure to question the need to replace the ageing Trident missile system, said he was "extremely sceptical" about the project. He added: "Trident was developed in the Cold War to meet Cold War conditions, which ended 17 years ago. "We have to take decisions on what are the main security threats in the future, rather than building weapons to fight the last war." Trident will be obsolete in 15 to 20 years. But Mr Clarke said a new system would not deter today's threats - terrorism, organised crime and people trafficking. The Government is expected to announce on Monday that it supports replacing Trident. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have already said they back the plan, which goes to a Commons vote in the New Year. But many Labour MPs and some Cabinet members are said to be against buying a new system - including Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain and International Development Secretary Hilary Benn. Leader of the House Jack Straw said the Government was braced for a backbench revolt on the issue - but expected to win. NUCLEAR WASTE? 80 Hospitals 625 RAF helicopters 667 Schools 40,000 Police officers -------- business Isotope Can Be Bought Online for $69 December 01, 2006 The Associated Press By MARK EVANS http://www.topix.net/content/ap/1769020327300529178415628181253331770577 No luck shopping for that hard-to-buy-for science hobbyist in the family? The rare isotope suspected to have felled former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is surprisingly easy to buy _ in fact, for $69, it's a mouse click away. The polonium-210 you can get online from Sandia Park, N.M.-based United Nuclear is available to the general public in 0.1 microcurie units, an invisibly tiny amount that's exempt from federal licensing restrictions, according the company's Web site. In a note on the site, United Nuclear founder Bob Lazar says it's not a practical poison: You'd need 15,000 orders from him, more than $1 million worth, to potentially harm anyone, and each order comes electroplated on the inside of the eye of a needle. Lazar _ a former Las Vegas resident who gained attention years ago for claiming to have worked on a crashed UFO at the Nevada military base known as Area 51 _ was out of town and not available for comment Friday, said Michelle, his customer service agent. She declined to give her last name and said she could not answer any questions. But she noted that Lazar recently updated his Web site to deal with the clamor over polonium-210 that followed Litvinenko's death. The site _ at http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm _ says it aims to put the fun back into science by selling an array of scientific materials and equipment, as well as things like science-themed T-shirts and coffee mugs. Polonium-210, used by the former Soviet Union in power supply systems for spacecraft in the 1970s, also can be used in industrial devices, such as those designed to eliminate static electricity. Lazar says he sells only one or two orders of polonium every three months. He claims he does not stock the isotopes but can get them made to order at an NRC-licensed reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The isotope is then shipped 'directly to the customer from the reactor to insure the longest possible half-life.' The target audience is science hobbyists, industry, government, schools and universities, the Web site says. ---- Westinghouse plans new facility in Pa. instead of N.C. Daniel Lovering Sunday, 01.07.2007 Charlotte, NC, WBT Radio News http://www.wbt.com/news/detail_wbt.cfm?article_id=28690 Westinghouse Electric Corp. is tentatively planning to open a new engineering facility in western Pennsylvania, bringing 1,000 to 2,000 new jobs to the area, a company spokesman said Wednesday. The nuclear energy company was considering sites in seven states before choosing the region over the Charlotte, N.C., area, said Vaughn Gilbert, a Westinghouse spokesman. ``It's not official, but western Pennsylvania looks very good,'' he said, adding that a final decision would be made by the end of December. The facility would be built in Cranberry, a Pittsburgh suburb, or added to the company's Monroeville headquarters and would house engineering personnel working primarily on new nuclear plants to be built in the U.S., Europe and Asia, he said. The company has already started hiring for the new positions, and they will work at existing buildings until the new facility is established, Gilbert said. The workers will be involved in the design of the new plants as well as project management, procurement and other jobs, he said. The work force growth comes amid a period of attrition at the company, which expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s before reaching a plateau. A significant number of employees are eligible or will soon become eligible for retirement. Westinghouse already employs about 3,000 people in western Pennsylvania. It hired 800 people last year and plans to hire a total of 900 new workers this year and 500 people annually over the next four to five years, Gilbert said. It has 9,200 employees worldwide. The expansion was spurred, in part, by the comeback of the nuclear power industry, which has pitched itself as being price-competitive with fossil fuels and as making electricity without greenhouse gases. News of the expansion was first reported Wednesday by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Westinghouse has been selected to build 12 of 16 new nuclear power plants in the United States. Those plants are slated to come online 2013 or 2014, according to Gilbert. It is also pursuing contracts in China, where new plants would be built sooner, as well as South Africa, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, he said. ``The new plant market is one that is fast becoming real,'' Gilbert said. On the Net: Westinghouse Electric Corp: http://www.westinghouse.com/ -------- depleted uranium Christian group to protest ATK's uranium arms Cliff Kindy, Christian Peacemaker Teams December 01, 2006 http://www.times-news.com/opinion/local_story_335103743.html Twelve of us from Christian Peacemaker Teams are here in the Cumberland area. Four of us have been to Iraq and learned too much about depleted uranium (DU) weapons, like those assembled at ATK/ABL in Rocket Center, W.Va. When used in the field, they are a deadly military tool, but the ceramic aerosol that results when DU hits a target also injures and kills innocent civilians and U.S. soldiers who breathe in the tiny particles even months or years later. (Depleted Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. We will hold prayer vigils for the victims of ATK DU products at the intersection of U.S. 220 and Route 956, south of Pinto today and tomorrow. -------- europe Head of nuclear construction project says schedule may be too tight TVO says scheduling was carefully thought out Friday 12.1.2007 Helsingin Sanomat, Finland http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Head+of+nuclear+construction+project+says+schedule+may+be+too+tight/1135223763189 Philippe Knoche, who was recently named the new head of the construction project for the third nuclear reactor at the Olkiluoto plant in the West of Finland, says that the original schedule for the construction of the plant for the power company TVO may have been somewhat too challenging. He notes that the reactor building, which is being built by the French company Areva, is the first third-generation nuclear plant of its kind. "The work should not be hurried at the expense of safety",Knoche says. Knoche started out as the new head of the project of the French-German consortium chosen to build the installation, replacing Ulrich Geise at the beginning of this month. Knoche aired his views for the first time on Friday in Olkiluoto. He pointed out that the aim of the project is to build a nuclear power plant that is to operate at least 60 years. "Safety and quality here are more important than setting speed records in construction", he said. The third reactor unit at Olkiluoto is now expected to be ready for commercial energy production in 2011, about a year and a half behind schedule. Knoche emphasises that Finland is establishing a new standard for third-generation nuclear installations. "As the first of its kind, the speed of the construction, even at the current rate, would seem to represent a record level", Knoche says. Philippe Knoche has worked for Areva for about six years, and the positions he has held include that of the director responsibile for strategy. He would not analyse the reasons for the delays. Difficulties experienced by the project range from the quality of the concrete and design mistakes all the way to damage caused by a recent autumn storm. The loss of a year and a half’s worth of electricity production are estimated at nearly EUR 600 million. TVO, Areva, and Siemens are to hold thorough discussions on payment of compensation for the delays in the project, with a total estimated value of EUR three billion. TVO’s Martin Landtman, who has headed the whole project from the very beginning, does not agree with Knoche that the schedule was too ambitious. "The original schedule was certainly based on careful calculations; the builder simply has not been able to carry it out", Landtman says. -------- iran “Leave Us Alone,” Iranian Reformers Say By Muhammad Sahimi December 2006 Issue Progressive http://www.progressive.org/node/4253 Back in March, the Bush Administration released its new “National Security Strategy of the United States,” and regime change in Iran leaps out of it as a goal. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” the document baldly states in a grand exaggeration. And for all the recent talk about Iran’s nuclear threat, the document does not confine its discussion of Iran to the nuclear issue. “The United States has broader concerns,” it says. “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq, and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom.” All of these issues, along with the nuclear one, “can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people,” the document states. “This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy.” President Bush and Condoleezza Rice may stress in public that they are giving diplomacy a try, but this document makes clear that they have something else in mind. If the Bush Administration attacks Iran, it would be violating the U.N. Charter. And it would also be violating the Algiers Accord that the United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. Point I, paragraph 1, of that accord states, “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.” Not only is the goal of regime change illegal, it is also unachievable. “Democracy cannot be imported, nor can it be given to a people by invading their nation, nor by bombing them with cluster bombs. It must be indigenous,” says Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. The Administration has refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes, and even the use of nuclear weapons, on Iran’s nuclear facilities and beyond, as if the Iraq quagmire has not taught it anything. And Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was formed only in 1932 with artificial boundaries that have no historical roots. Iran, on the other hand, has existed for thousands of years as an independent nation. Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce. Military strikes on Iran would create a potent mixture that combines fierce Iranian nationalism with the Shiites’ long tradition of martyrdom in defense of their homeland and religion. The attacks would engulf the entire region in flames. “Iranians will not allow a single U.S. soldier to set foot in Iran,” declares Ebadi, and this is a woman who has been imprisoned by Iran’s hardliners and is constantly harassed for her work on behalf of political prisoners. Armchair warriors, such as William Kristol, have been claiming that intense bombing of Iran will lead to an uprising by Iranians. The absurd argument is that, “We will destroy Iran, but Iranians will love us for bombing them, and hate the hardliners.” Although a large majority of Iranians despise the hardliners, anyone who has the slightest familiarity with Iran’s history knows that intense bombing of Iran will not lead to their downfall. Rather, it will help them consolidate power. “The conservatives need an external enemy in order to preserve their power,” says Mohammad Reza Khatami, a leading reformist and younger brother of the former president. By creating an unnecessary crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, the Administration has played right into the hands of Iran’s hardliners. After Saddam Hussein and his regime were swiftly overthrown in 2003, the government of reformist President Mohammad Khatami suspended the uranium enrichment program and began negotiating with Britain, France, and Germany. The negotiations could have led to tangible results, but because they did not involve regime change in Iran, they were scuttled by the U.S. The Iranian hardliners now point to those good-faith negotiations with the EU troika and say, with much credibility, that it was the United States that prevented an agreement. The result is that the generally pro-U.S. Iranian people are now behind the hardliners when it comes to the issue of Iran’s right to the complete nuclear fuel cycle. During Iran’s presidential elections of 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran on a platform of “bringing the oil wealth to people’s homes,” promising a robust economy, elimination of corruption, and ample employment opportunities for Iran’s young and educated people. It has now become clear that Ahmadinejad could not deliver on those promises. Knowing this, he has used the U.S.-created nuclear crisis not only for inciting Iranian nationalism, but also for distracting people’s attention from Iran’s vast economic, social, and political problems, as well as attempting to suppress Iran’s democratic movement. “The best the U.S. government can do for democracy in Iran is to leave us alone,” Akbar Gangi, an Iranian investigative journalist who spent six years in prison for reporting on the murder of dissidents by Iran’s intelligence agents, said on a recent trip to the United States. Iran has a wide spectrum of reformist and democratic groups that are all against U.S. intervention in Iran’s internal affairs and its goal of regime change. They favor political evolution and have made it clear that, for many reasons, they will not work with the United States. Many wonder aloud why the U.S. did nothing when the reformist Khatami was elected in 1997. Washington could have lifted its economic sanctions against Iran that hurt only ordinary Iranians, but it did not. After Khatami’s government helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by listing Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil.” The Bush Administration is hard-pressed to find any Iran-based political group to work with. So, it can only work with groups in exile. One is the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), a cult that is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization but supported by the neoconservatives. Iranians despise the MKO for acting as a spying outfit for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. The second group consists of Iranian monarchists, who are a spent force, a relic of a dark past. As with Iraq, the Administration has also been trying to manufacture intelligence to incriminate Iran. There is now an “Office of Iranian Affairs” at the State Department that is a duplicate of the Pentagon’s “Office of Special Plans” for the invasion of Iraq. Just as the Pentagon used unreliable Iraqi exiles to hype the case for that war, so, too, the neoconservatives are enlisting such Iranian curveballs as Manouchehr Ghorbanifar, Alireza Jafarzadeh, Ali Safavi, and Mohammad Mohaddesin. Ghorbanifar is an arms dealer who played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair, and has ties with the neoconservatives—in particular, Michael Ledeen. The others have connections with the MKO. Similar to their Iraqi counterparts, they have been making outlandish claims about Iran’s nuclear program, almost all of which have been proven by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be false. In their search for Iranian Ahmad Chalabis, the neoconservatives have been looking to Abbas Fakhravar, who falsely presents himself as a leader of Iranian students; Akbar Atri, an Iranian member of the Committee on the Present Danger; and Rob Sobhani, who has connections to Iran’s monarchists. None has any credibility in Iran. Fakhravar and Sobhani are not even known there. “The Chalabis do not bring democracy to their homelands,” Gangi said in October when he received the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. The propaganda offensive already has begun, fueled by the $56 million that Congress has appropriated ostensibly to bring democracy to Iran. U.S.-funded radio and satellite TV networks are beaming programs into the country. But Iranian monarchists have, for years, been broadcasting into Iran, with no impact. Similarly, the Persian programs broadcast into Iran by the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe, while listened to, are widely discounted, simply because Iranians do not believe that foreign-funded broadcasts are objective. Then there are the exaggerated news, outright lies, and unsubstantiated claims that Iran’s enemies plant in newspapers around the world. A recent story in the New York Post by Amir Taheri, an Iranian monarchist and neoconservative, about Iran’s parliament debating a law for regulating a special dress code for Iranian Jews turned out to be completely false. With his deplorable statements regarding Israel and the Holocaust, President Ahmadinejad has not helped the situation any. But within Iran’s political power structure, important decisions regarding its foreign policy and national security are not made by its president. Iran’s official policy is to recognize the two-state solution for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, if the Palestinians also accept it. Much has been made of Iran enriching a minuscule amount of uranium at 4.8 percent that is far from serviceable in the making of nuclear weapons. By contrast, Brazil enriched uranium to a 20 percent level and limited IAEA’s visits to its enrichment facilities. South Korea, Taiwan, and Egypt have all been caught by the IAEA trying to secretly enrich uranium or design a nuclear bomb or engage in experiments without declaring them to the IAEA. But where is the U.S. outrage at such violations? And Israel, of course, already has about 200 nuclear weapons, and Pakistan, Iran’s neighbor to the east, is also armed with nuclear weapons. Such hypocrisy has angered Iranian reformists and human rights advocates. “In fighting nuclear proliferation, all countries must be treated equally,” Gangi said in The Washington Post. “The Iranian people do not accept double standards in this matter.” Nor will they accept aggression. Muhammad Sahimi is a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California who has written about Iran’s nuclear program and its political developments. He has also worked with Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi in helping to communicate to U.S. audiences what is going on in Iran. -------- japan Japan Pledges To IAEA To Shun Nukes by Staff Writers Tokyo (AFP) Dec 01, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Japan_Pledges_To_IAEA_To_Shun_Nukes_999.html A top Japanese official Friday promised the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog that the country will not develop nuclear weapons, despite growing debate on the longtime taboo since North Korea's atomic test. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei that Japan stood by its 1967 three-point policy of refusing the production, possession or presence of nuclear weapons on its soil. "Japan has been working to strengthen non-proliferation and disarmament efforts and there is no change in our three-point non-nuclear policy," Shiozaki told ElBaradei, according to a foreign ministry statement. ElBaradei, speaking later in the day to a news conference, said: "I have been assured, obviously, by government officials here in Japan that Japan has no intention to abandon its non-nuclear policy." Shiozaki, who is the government spokesman and right-hand man of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, spoke one day after outspoken Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Japan was able to produce nuclear weapons if it chose to do so. Aso, who met late Thursday with ElBaradei, has been at the forefront of calls for Japan to consider the nuclear option in response to North Korea. Abe has ruled out even discussing building nuclear weapons, but the issue has caused concern in neighboring countries haunted by Japan's past aggression. Japan is the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack. US nuclear bombs obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II, killing more than 210,000 people. ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is visiting Japan in part for talks on North Korea, which on October 9 tested a nuclear bomb. -------- russia Belarus President Supports Nuclear Power Plant Plan 01.12.2006 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/12/01/belarusatom.shtml Belarus’ president said Friday he supported an estimated $2.5-billion project to build a nuclear power plant in the country to cut its dependence on energy imports, Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reports. Belarusian scientists drafted a plan for the NPP in May but no final decision followed. The plant with generating capacity of 2,000 megawatts would take about 10 years to build and is expected to reduce Belarusian dependence on Russia’s energy by 24%. “Belarusian scientists and experts ... have unanimously approved a resolution to build an NPP in the country and to begin all necessary arrangements this year,” Alexander Lukashenko told an energy security conference. Belarus currently imports most of its energy from Russia. The two countries are in tense talks over the gas price for next year. Russia is seeking to quadruple the current price of $46.68 per 1,000 cubic meters. Lukashenko said his latest talks with the Russian leadership concerned a possible hydrocarbon deficit. “Our negotiations for the first time highlighted a possible hydrocarbon deficit in the future, and Belarus might have to face lack of hydrocarbons due to shortfalls inside Russia,” he said. Lukashenko said nuclear plants were the best way to overcome a global energy crisis. “Nuclear energy is widely used in Europe. About 80% of France’s electricity is generated at nuclear plants,” he said. Experts said the share of nuclear power in Belarus’ energy balance could rise to 20%, and the share of natural gas could decline to 50% by 2020 if the project was implemented. By 2050, the plant could bring the share of nuclear power to 85%. Lukashenko said a location for the plant would be carefully selected to avoid any risks to human health. “There can be no mistake in choosing the site,” he said, adding that safety requirements must be strictly observed. Belarus was one of the worst-hit countries in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl NPP disaster, RIA-Novosti reports. ---- Russian nuclear industry on path of systemic change 01/ 12/ 2006 (RIA Novosti commentator Tatiana Sinitsyna) http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061201/56328729.html MOSCOW - "This year has been important for the nuclear industry from two points of view," said Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, at a news conference at RIA Novosti. "This is a year when strategic decisions have been made that will divide the nuclear industry into military and civilian parts. The former will remain unchanged, while the latter will become independent and subject to universal transparency standards." The nuclear industry, a conservative heavyweight which has preserved Soviet traditions longer than any other, can be pushed forward only by systemic change. Kiriyenko, a prominent politician and manager, initiated the sector's restructuring. The agency has surprised the country with the scale of its transformation. On December 6, the Russian parliament is expected to consider a bill that will finalize the division of the nuclear industry. Civilian enterprises will be reincorporated as joint-stock companies, and legal entities will receive access to nuclear materials. At the same time, the state will maintain total control over the sector. The change will allow the fuel cycle and power generation to be combined into one process and to compete on the industrial market, which will eventually make the end product, kilowatt-hours, cheaper. It is also important that the industry will be able to attract private capital to meet some of its huge financial demands. The new bill will also eliminate obstacles to foreign trade. For example, Australia, a major exporter of uranium, is willing to sell it to Russia only if it is not used in the defense industry. The size of Russia's nuclear industry means that it needs significant amounts of uranium, but its own reserves will soon be exhausted. This year, the agency has managed to improve the situation. It set up a Mining Company that consolidated all uranium-producing assets in Russia and even international projects, which include a joint venture with Kazakhstan. This has allowed Russia to take a new position on the global market and to obtain additional opportunities of implementing innovative technology and boosting the construction of nuclear power plants (NPPs). The NPPs that are currently in place were mostly built in the 1960s-1970s, and their service life is coming to an end. Together, they produce 16% of the electricity generated in Russia. Now the agency has set itself the task of maintaining this share until the 2020s-2030s. There is only one way to do this: to build at least two (or better three or four) nuclear generation units a year. Kiriyenko's plan is based on the assumption that the reform of the nuclear industry has to be coordinated with the government's strategy and endorsed at the top level. This is why his agency drafted a federal target program for the nuclear sector's development, which was signed by President Vladimir Putin last July. In accordance with the strategy, the federal draft budget for 2007 allocates 17 billion rubles for the first couple of new reactors. Digging deep into corporate problems, Kiriyenko found out that Atomstroiexport, a company that builds NPPs abroad, had been sold to private investors for $20 million, while its order portfolio stood at several billion dollars and was guaranteed by the state budget. The situation was inexplicable and illogical: a private company was an operator under intergovernmental agreements. Efforts were made to return a controlling stake (50.8%) in Atomstroiexport to the government. This move helped to dispel any doubts the company's foreign partners may have had. Perhaps, these developments influenced Bulgaria's decision, which after a long delay chose Russia in a tender for the construction of an NPP in Belena. This victory signaled Russia's "return to the European market," Kiriyenko said. The country also won other European tenders, including ones for supplying nuclear fuel to the Czech Republic's Temelin NPP and to Finland's Loviisa, defeating a powerful rival, Westinghouse, on its traditional market. "Russia is a member of all international organizations, including Generation IV, a global partnership which seeks to develop the nuclear reactors of the future," said Yevgeny Velikhov, president of the Kurchatov Institute Research Center and member of the Russian Academy. "We are members of an unprecedented global program to construct the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France. Overall, the agency is making notable progress." ---- Russia, Indonesia sign deal on nuclear power cooperation 01/ 12/ 2006 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20061201/56330342.html MOSCOW, December 1 - Russia and Indonesia have signed an agreement on civilian nuclear power cooperation, the Russian Federal Nuclear Power Agency said Friday. The agreement, inked by the agency chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, and Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, is part of the Russia-Indonesia summit in Moscow, which started earlier in the day with a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, on his three-day visit to Russia. Kiriyenko said Moscow is ready to take part in a tender for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Indonesia, to be announced by 2008. He said Russia possessed a wide range of competitive technologies in the nuclear power sector, including a floating NPP design that may attract Indonesia's interest. Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, Atomstroyexport is currently building five nuclear power plants in China, India and Iran, on contracts worth $4.5 billion. ---- Polonium tightly controlled in Russia-atomic chief 01 Dec 2006 08:42:25 GMT Source: Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L01851439.htm MOSCOW, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Polonium 210, a highly toxic radioactive substance found in the boby of an ex-KGB spy who died in London last week, cannot be obtained illegally in Russia, its nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on Friday. Traces of polonium have also been found in several passenger aircraft and at several places in London, some of which Alexander Litvinenko -- a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- visited before his death. In his last note, made public by friends after his death, Litvinenko said Putin was behind his murder. The Kremlin and Russian secret services have denied any connection with his death. The head of Russia's state atomic energy agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Russia produces only 8 grams of Polonium 210 a month. "All this amount goes to U.S. companies through a single authorised supplier, Tekhsnabexport company," the newspaper quoted Kiriyenko as saying. Kiriyenko refused to say how polonium was produced, but said nuclear reactors like the Russian RMBK or the Canadian CANDU were needed to make it. "In Russia all nuclear reactors, including those used for research, are government property tightly controlled by federal authorities," he said. ---- In New Video, Late Russian Spy Says Putin Ordered Russian Journalist Death Friday, December 1st, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255 In Britain, new video has surfaced of Alexander Litvinenko just weeks before his death. Litvinenko is the Russian spy who died last week of an apparent poisoning. He had been investigating the death of Anna Politkovskaya -- the Russian journalist and government critic shot dead at her Moscow apartment in October. The new video was taken at a journalists’ event in London on October 19th. Litvinenko accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering Politkovskaya’s murder. Alexander Litvinenko: "Somebody has asked me directly, who is guilty of Anna's death? Who has killed her? I can directly answer you, it is Mr Putin, the President of the Russian federation who killed her. I can tell you the facts and you can make your own conclusions." Shortly before he died, Litvinenko accused Putin of being behind his poisoning as he lay on his deathbed. Meanwhile, police in Ireland have launched an investigation into whether former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was poisoned when he fill ill last week. -------- security Spy case raises questions on radiation response Nuclear expert: We can't handle one incident, let alone a dirty bomb MSNBC, Dec 1, 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15986779/ LONDON - If the poisoning of one man can pose such a serious test for the British government, how would it handle a full-scale radiological attack? A week after former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed by the radioactive poison Polonium 210, some security analysts see major flaws in the emergency response system and question its ability to cope with a larger crisis. Among their chief concerns is the three weeks it took for doctors to establish that the dying Litvinenko had been poisoned by a nuclear substance. “The man was radioactive in a hospital for weeks and nobody knew it. That’s terrifying,” said Robert Ayers, a former U.S. intelligence officer now working for London’s Chatham House think-tank. Independent nuclear expert John Large told Reuters: “It’s taken us three to four weeks to literally get on the case. In terms of us being prepared for a radiological incident, this is a very bad portent.” He added: “Good heavens, we can’t handle one radiation incident, let alone someone exploding a dirty bomb.” Security officials have been braced for years for the scenario of a dirty bomb -- a device containing a mix of explosives and radioactive material -- that might only kill a few people but would contaminate a wide area and spread panic. But the detection challenge would be much greater, Ayers said, in the event of a more insidious attack such as spreading radioactive material in a public place where many people would be exposed and only gradually fall ill. “What we should be focusing on is our ability to detect and react to events like this in the future,” he said. Radioactive trail Since Litvinenko’s death on Nov. 23, investigations have gradually uncovered a radioactive trail across London of a dozen contaminated locations, some visited by the former Russian agent after he fell ill but others so far unexplained. The government has reassured Britons that the risk is negligible, because Polonium 210 is not dangerous unless swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through a wound. But public unease grew with this week’s disclosure that some 33,000 passengers have traveled in the past month on planes suspected of bearing traces of radioactivity. The case has posed a severe communications test for the authorities. With a major police investigation in progress, they have declined to give answers to some obvious questions, such as what material was found on board the planes and where. And the mere fact of alerting tens of thousands of people to an issue as emotive as nuclear radiation is almost bound to spread alarm, experts said. Mike Grannatt, a former government emergency planner, said the authorities were right to strive for openness, including by admitting the gaps in their knowledge. “Saying ’we don’t know yet, but we’ll tell you’, is much more credible than trying to bluff your way through it,” he told the BBC. Home Secretary John Reid has pledged to draw lessons from the Litvinenko affair. But the communication challenge may, if anything, grow as the investigation widens. “This ever-increasing story is now causing people a great deal of anxiety because we don’t understand the origin of it, the pervasiveness of it, and what the real threat may be,” Ayers said. “What’s going to be the announcement the day after tomorrow?” -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- nevada Yucca coalition presses Reid on 'abusing' powers Project supporters challenge senator to schedule votes By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Dec. 01, 2006 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Dec-01-Fri-2006/news/11160651.html Sen. Harry Reid shakes hands with Nellis Air Force Base personnel on Thursday. Earlier, he rejected criticism by a nuclear energy coalition that his pledge to block votes on the Yucca Mountain Project would be an abuse of his new powers as Senate majority leader. WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a coalition that supports the Yucca Mountain repository applied pressure on Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday, saying that he is "abusing" his new powers as Senate majority leader by pledging to block votes on the project planned in Southern Nevada. Reid, who will lead the Senate when it reconvenes in January, was challenged to allow debate and votes on "fix Yucca Mountain" bills that could pass even though he adamantly opposes them. By refusing to schedule votes, the Nevadan is putting parochial interests before the needs of the nation to relocate radioactive spent fuel away from communities, and the desires of fellow Democrats who have nuclear waste piling up in their states, the repository advocates said. "When (Reid) is leading the majority, he has to act in the best interests of the majority, and the best interests of the majority is to move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain," said LeRoy Koppendrayer, chairman of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. "Would he vote for it himself? I doubt it, but he should let his members vote," Koppendrayer, coalition chairman, said at a news conference. "To even prohibit it from coming to the floor to be addressed to me is a misuse and an abuse of the position," said Charles Pray, a former Maine legislator who now is that state's nuclear adviser. "Please, Senator Reid, stand aside," declared Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International, a nuclear transport company. Edlow said Reid is "conflicted" between roles as Nevada senator and as majority leader and should "remove himself from this debate to let others make the decisions." The coalition consists of public service commissions, nuclear utilities and business interests in 26 states where radioactive spent fuel is stored. It focuses on how the government is managing more than $14 billion that utility ratepayers have contributed into a repository construction fund. Reid said Thursday the coalition was "whistling in the wind" if it thought he would step aside or relax his efforts against Yucca Mountain. "This is not a Nevada parochial issue," he contended. "People all over the country don't like nuclear waste. There is not an environmental group around that supports (Yucca Mountain)." "Yes, the responsibilities I have are broader now, I have more to do than before, but Nevada comes first," Reid said. "I am not going to abuse my power." Reid has contended that a proposal he and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have made to have the government manage nuclear waste at reactor sites would be a safer alternative than shipping it to Nevada, where elected leaders argue the Yucca site is flawed and unsafe. That plan, which he has said he will continue to promote in the new Congress, has picked up little support since it was introduced last year. Reid also has backed a bill by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to authorize interim nuclear waste sites in as many as 31 states, but that idea has been roundly criticized by governors and the Department of Energy as unwieldy. The last time the Senate voted on Yucca Mountain was July 9, 2002, when the repository was approved 60-39. Thirty of the senators serving then have since retired or lost office. Political scientist Barbara Sinclair said congressional leaders occasionally confront questions of "where to draw the line" between state and national priorities. "What the national interest is tends to some extent to be in the eye of the beholder, but mostly the general notion is that of course leaders are going to use their positions to help their own states," said Sinclair, who teaches at UCLA. Considering public opposition to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, "it would be crazy" for Reid to be seen as loosening his hold, Sinclair said. Reid is up for re-election in 2010. "Unless he plans on retiring, this is a no-brainer," because Reid's races generally have been close and he has little wiggle room electorally to compromise, said Richard Semiatin, a political science professor at American University. But Pray said Reid risks being accused of abusing his leadership if his decisions on nuclear waste cause problems for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, which are leading states in terms of nuclear waste being stored in cooling pools and on-site dry casks. "If (Illinois Senators Richard) Durbin and (Barack) Obama want to vote to protect Nevada as perceived by Senator Reid, that is a decision they will have to make," Pray said. With Democrats just having captured the Senate on Election Day and Reid in line to become majority leader, the Nevadan said on Nov. 8 that bills to help Yucca Mountain would never see the Senate floor. Two bills that would allow the Department of Energy to make progress at the repository site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, were proposed in the Congress that is coming to an end this month. It is not yet clear what will be reintroduced in the next session. Another Domenici bill would allow DOE to begin storing nuclear waste on above-ground concrete pads at the Yucca site in 2010, which is at least seven years sooner than the Bush administration has envisioned. A separate "fix Yucca" bill proposed by the administration would authorize a series of changes in law to enable DOE to obtain permits, land ownership and the necessary financing to build the repository. Interest groups and industry organizations that deal with nuclear waste are refocusing their Yucca Mountain strategies on a reconstituted Congress. While the public utility coalition appears to be adopting a combative stance, reaction among other nuclear interests has varied. The Edison Electric Institute earlier this week signaled a willingness to work with Reid. "Harry Reid and the Democrats have to be part of the solution," institute President Tom Kuhn said at a news conference Tuesday. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the largest nuclear lobbying organization, has been low key so far, offering no glimpses as to how it plans to operate in the new Congress. Spokeswoman Trish Conrad said NEI does not share the view that Reid would be abusing power by marshaling his leadership against the repository. "I am told we have not held that opinion nor do we have plans to do so in the future," Conrad said. As for calling on Reid to step aside on repository bills, "we are not aware of any precedent of this kind," Conrad said. -------- new jersey Activists bring in help to stop Oyster Creek relicensing January 1, 2007, Newsday http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--oystercreek0101jan01,0,7672500.story LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- They've brought in academics. They've brought in lawyers. Grassroots activists have gotten serious in their efforts to prevent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from relicensing Oyster Creek, the nation's oldest commercial nuclear power plant. "We feel we're doing the job the NRC should have been doing all along," Janet Tauro, a member of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety, told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday newspapers. In the process, the anti-Oyster Creek activists have had some successes regarding the plant, located in Lacey Township along the southern New Jersey Shore. The NRC had refused to investigate corrosion in the plant's dry well liner, a steel structure meant to contain nuclear releases during an accident. But lawyers for the activists successfully appealed to a judicial arm of the commission, forcing the release of documents from the plant's owner. Based on the information, the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is holding another hearing. Oyster Creek opened in 1969 and is owned by Amergen, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. The company is seeking to keep Oyster Creek open until 2029. Without relicensing, it would have to close in 2009. Rachelle Benson, a plant spokeswoman, said there have been security upgrades and a large amount of preventative maintenance, all to make sure the plant is safe. "Exelon would not risk their reputation, or the nuclear industry's reputation, on a plant that wasn't safe," Benson said. Area activists have been trying to get the plant shut down through most of its history. But in the present relicensing fight, the groups banded together into a coalition _ called Stop Relicensing of Oyster Creek. They sought help from the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic, whose attorneys agreed to represent them. Other nuclear power protesters may be taking notice. Richard Webster, one of the attorneys for the anti-Oyster Creek coalition, said activists in other states have called seeking advice in their own plant relicensing fights. "People are definitely starting to use the same approach we've used here," Webster said. Information from: The Star-Ledger, http://www.nj.com/starledger -------- new york Nuclear power plant back on line after nonradiated water leak repair NY Journal News December 1, 2006 http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061201/UPDATE/612010448 BUCHANAN - The Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant is back on line this morning and expected to run at full power before noon. The power plant was shut down at 8:30 a.m. yesterday to repair a leak of nonradiated water, according to Nuclear Entergy Northeast, which operates the plant. There was no threat to the public, an Entergy spokesman said. The leak was in a 1-inch steel alloy pipe within the containment building that houses the nuclear reactor. The power plant went back on line a few minutes after midnight. -------- washington Hanford contracts could steer cleanup for next 10 years By SHANNON DININNY, 12/01/2006 Associated Press http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8LNPQSG1.html The U.S. Department of Energy is getting ready to bid out three contracts at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation — nothing new in terms of the federal government's long-running environmental cleanup at the former weapons facility. But these contracts — worth potentially billions of dollars — would be among the largest at Hanford and could steer cleanup at the highly contaminated site for the next 10 years. "Very significant," Todd Martin, chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board, said when asked to describe the importance of the new contracts. "These will be very important in determining whether cleanup ultimately is successful over the next few years." For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total as much as $60 billion, with the work to continue until 2035. The contracts to go out to bid are substantial as well. Fluor Hanford currently holds the contract to retrieve and dispose of waste from Hanford's central plateau. Among other things, the contract requires monitoring and remediation of contaminated groundwater and cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, which was the last stop in converting plutonium nitrate solutions into pure plutonium "buttons" for atomic bombs. Through September 2006, the five-year contract with a five-year extension was valued at $7.87 billion. The Energy Department further extended the contract by as long as 24 months for $1.3 billion while it accepts bids for a new contract to start in 2008. Meanwhile, CH2M Hill Hanford Group since 2000 has managed Hanford's 177 underground tanks, which hold a stew of toxic and radioactive waste. Many of the tanks have leaked into the aquifer, threatening the groundwater and the nearby Columbia River. The contract was valued at $2.7 billion through September 2006, with a $500 million extension of up to 24 months. The Energy Department has now added a third contract to the mix, reassigning some of the duties currently covered under Fluor's contract. These so-called "mission support" duties include safety and security, information technology and road work. "The main thing we're trying to look at with these contracts is to make sure there's no disconnects between contractors," said Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy, which makes recommendations to the federal agency. "Over the years, that has been one of the problems with Hanford cleanup — there have been gray areas in terms of contractor responsibilities." Niles, whose agency is preparing comments for the Energy Department's draft request for proposals, also raised concerns that only companies with an insider-knowledge of Hanford could attempt to bid on the contracts. "It's always positive to maybe take a new look at something that has had some struggles," he said. "The drawback to that, though, is it almost always means lost time and added costs. You'd have the new folks trying to find their way. "There's a little bit of good and little bit of bad in both," he said. Washington state generally doesn't get involved with the Energy Department's contracting process, said Joye Redfield-Wilder, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology. "Our main concern is that the Energy Department hire contractors that can conduct a quality cleanup and that they are in compliance with the milestones — that the work in no way is hampered or slowed down," she said. Others are already raising concerns about the Energy Department's draft request for proposals. Gerry Pollet, executive director of the Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, criticized the short time frame for comments — they're due Dec. 22 — for such a massive project. He also faulted the incentive-laden contracts that often steer contractors to completing work that might not be most crucial or time-sensitive. "Contractors are like anyone else — they do what they're paid to do, and out of what they're paid to do, they choose to do the things they have the highest profit from," Pollet said. The last large contract the Energy Department awarded took two years to resolve following disputes among bidders, workers and the department itself. The agency eventually awarded the $1.9 billion contract to clean up the 210-square-mile Columbia River Corridor to Washington Closure LLC in March 2005. The Energy Department also is in the process of renegotiating its contract with Bechtel, the company hired to build a massive waste treatment plant that has been mired in cost overruns and delays, and is accepting bids for the contract to manage the nearby Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. With all of that going on, the latest bidding process is almost certain to result in delays in cleanup, Martin said. "There is absolutely no doubt that this system is not very nimble when it comes to these large contracts and awarding them in an efficient manner and then transitioning to a new contractor," he said. "Changing of the letterhead can take a lot of money and a lot of time." -------- MILITARY -------- iraq Spy Chief Cites Perils in Iraq By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Friday, December 1, 2006 12 50 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/12/01/national/w125044S94.DTL http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-12-01-negroponte_x.htm (12-01) 12:50 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- National Intelligence Director John Negroponte says Iraq is far more precarious than much of Vietnam was when he served as a U.S. diplomat there in the 1960s. An expert on Vietnam and one-time adviser to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Negroponte said he sees more differences than similarities between the two conflicts. In Vietnam, for example, there was a clear enemy, given Soviet support of the North Vietnamese. Additionally, "in Vietnam, the cities were secure. The province capitals were secure. I walked around that country as an unarmed civilian for almost four years without ever having any serious brushes," said Negroponte, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. "In Iraq, even the capital is highly insecure — perhaps one of the most insecure places in the country." Negroponte made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that airs Sunday evening on C-SPAN's "Q&A" program. A transcript was made available to The Associated Press. Negroponte took over as the nation's top intelligence official last year, assuming a post created to unify the 16 intelligence agencies. He indicated in the interview that he wants to stay on through the Bush administration. Many associates have expected Negroponte to return to his diplomatic roots, perhaps serving as deputy secretary of State, a position open since July. His answer to the question — will he "stay with it for a while?" — didn't completely close to door to a new assignment. "In my own mind at least, I visualize staying with it through the end of this administration and, then I think, probably that'll be about the right time to pack it in," he said. Negroponte, who also is a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said Iraqis must take more responsibility for their security and defense. The key, he said, is Baghdad, where the violence is greatest. His comments closely tracked the conclusions of an independent group led by former Secretary of State James Baker that is advising the administration as it redraws its Iraq policy. "This has really got to become more and more of an Iraqi problem, and less and less of a U.S. one," he said. "I would hope that our forces can take more of a support role and a training role, and fall more into the background rather than being in the lead in the months ahead." Negroponte said he wasn't certain of the impact should an Iraq court follow through with its Nov. 5 sentence to hang former dictator Saddam Hussein for ordering the execution of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims. The sentence triggered an automatic appeal. "There are a lot of the Iraqis that want some kind of closure in this situation," Negroponte said. "There are probably also some insurgents, some Sunni extremist insurgents, who are fighting in the belief that — under the illusion that — they may be fighting to bring Mr. Saddam back to power, so it could have the effect of actually discouraging some of the Sunni extremists." Negroponte voiced one regret about the nine months he served as ambassador to Iraq: that the United States wasn't able to convince Sunni politicians to scrap their boycott of the January 2005 elections. "I think that that was a real setback for the political process," he said. -------- spies Pentagon Intelligence Chief to Step Down By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer Friday, December 1, 2006 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/12/01/national/w154317S03.DTL (12-01) 15:43 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Stephen A. Cambone, the Pentagon's top intelligence official and a close ally of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, will step down at the end of the year, becoming the first key department member to leave in the wake of Rumsfeld's resignation. It had been widely speculated that Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, would resign as the Pentagon prepares for the expected Senate confirmation of a new defense chief — former CIA director Robert Gates. The Pentagon's intelligence-gathering has come under fire during Cambone's tenure, with critics accusing the Defense Department of trying to take expanded control over the nation's intelligence activities. Cambone was in charge of intelligence when it was disclosed a year ago that a Pentagon database of suspicious activities contained the names of anti-war groups that had been found not be security risks. Cambone ordered a review of the program. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said Gates did not request Cambone's resignation. "This was an independent decision," said Vician. "Dr. Cambone decided that now is a good time for a change to enable him to spend more time with his family." Cambone came to the Pentagon with Rumsfeld in January 2001, and served in three other top level posts before taking over the intelligence job in March 2003. ---- Ex-spy claims Litvinenko was targeted By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 1, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/ap_on_re_eu/russia_poisoned_spy MOSCOW - A former Russian security service officer said he warned a former KGB agent who was fatally poisoned in London about a government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him and other Kremlin opponents. In a letter released Friday, the former officer for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said he refused to cooperate with the team, whose task was to kill Alexander Litvinenko and others. The FSB is the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. Litvinenko, the former spy turned Kremlin critic who lived in Britain, died Nov. 23 at a London hospital, where doctors found traces of the rare radioactive element polonium-210 in his body. An autopsy was scheduled for Friday and doctors carrying out the examination planned safety precautions to protect themselves against radiation. In a deathbed statement, Litvinenko blamed President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning — charges the Kremlin rejected as "sheer nonsense." "Back in 2002, I warned Alexander Litvinenko that they set up a special team to kill him," the former security services officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, wrote in the letter dated Nov. 23 — the day of Litvinenko's death. The letter was released Friday by rights activists in Yekaterinburg, the center of the Ural Mountains province where he is serving his four-year sentence. "Maybe, the death of Alexander Litvinenko, who fell victim to unpunished revenge, could force those dealing with human rights issues to finally pay attention to these facts." An FSB spokesman refused to comment on Trepashkin's claim. Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 and convicted on charges of divulging state secrets while investigating allegations of FSB involvement in a series of deadly apartment bombings that killed about 300 people in Moscow and two other cities in 1999. The government blamed the explosions on Chechnya-based rebels, but Litvinenko and other Kremlin critics alleged they were staged by authorities as a pretext for launching the current Chechen war. The FSB, where Trepashkin worked until 1997, alleged that he had been recruited by British agents to collect compromising materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting the Russian security agency. Trepashkin said in his letter that after his arrest authorities had put him in a cell contaminated with poisonous chemicals and threatened to kill him. "Litvinenko and I aren't the last in this chain of victims of persecution," he wrote. "Maybe Litvinenko's death could make you believe in what he was saying." Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Moscow was ready to answer concrete questions from Britain concerning Litvinenko's death, Russian news agencies reported. "When the questions are formulated and sent through the existing channels, we will consider them thoroughly," Lavrov was quoted as saying in Jordan by the ITAR-Tass news agency. "There have been no such questions yet." Traces of radiation have been found at a dozen sites in Britain and five jetliners were being investigated for possible contamination as authorities widened their investigation into Litvinenko's poisoning. A coroner on Thursday formally opened an inquest into Litvinenko's death. Doctors in Moscow have said they believed Yegor Gaidar, a former premier and head of a liberal opposition party, may also have been poisoned during a conference Nov. 24 in Ireland. British Airways said Friday that one of its planes that has been parked at a Moscow airport would fly to London later in the day for a radiation check. Traces of radiation were found on it and two other aircraft that have traveled the Moscow-London route since Nov. 1, when Litvinenko is believed to have been poisoned. -------- terrorism U.S. volunteer charged with terrorism in Uganda 01 Dec 2006 Reuters By Tim Cocks http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L01898081.htm KAMPALA, Dec 1 (Reuters) - An American volunteer worker appeared in a Ugandan court on Friday charged with terrorism after being caught with a submachinegun, a pistol and 38 rounds of ammunition, according to the charge sheet. Christopher John Boehlke, 26, who works for a local charity helping old people in east Uganda, was arrested in Gulu, in the war-torn north of the country on Nov. 15. "On him we found an SMG (submachinegun), a pistol, rounds of ammunition and some military uniforms," police spokesman Edward Ochon told Reuters, adding that Boehlke had failed to explain how he got the weapons. Boehlke, whom the charge sheet described as an "American cattle keeper" from New York State, appeared for a few minutes in a Kampala court. He came with his father, brother and a U.S. embassy official, a Reuters witness saw. As Boehlke was led away from court to prison, he grabbed a journalist's camera and tried to push him away, while covering his face with a newspaper. The court referred an application for bail he had made to the High Court because terrorism is a capital offence. The maximum sentence faced by Boehlke, who has not yet made a formal plea, is death. But Ochon said such an outcome was unlikely. Boehlke was charged under a section of the 2002 Terrorism Act which prohibits the "unlawful importation, sale, making, manufacture or distribution of any firearms, explosive, ammunition or bomb." His case came after Uganda in March deported an American evangelist also charged with terrorism after police said they found assault rifles hidden in his bedroom days before a February presidential election. Ever since President Yoweri Museveni came to power 20 years ago his government has been fighting several rebel groups it brands "terrorists", such as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels notorious for brutal attacks on civilians in the north. It has also alleged incursions by various other rebel groups operating around its borders, particularly from eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. -------- war crimes Cluster bomb use deemed 'war crime' by UN team Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 1, 2006 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881798411&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter Three international law experts assigned by the UN human rights watchdog to investigate the aftermath of this summer's war in Lebanon said Friday that one of their main conclusions is that Israel's use of cluster bombs proves the weapons should be banned. The indiscriminate use of cluster bombs and deliberate attacks on civilians could qualify as war crimes that Israel should prosecute, according to a 153-page report the commission of inquiry presented to the UN Human Rights Council. # The second Lebanon war: JPost.com special report "We saw the terrible, cruel consequences of the use of those weapons," said Joao Clemente Baena Soares of Brazil. "We think they should be banned. They should be included in the list of weapons that are prohibited by international law." Israel's ambassador rejected the report as one-sided because it failed to include attacks on Israel by Hizbullah, which he said targeted the Israel with 13,000 missiles, placing more than two million Israeli citizens within firing range. "Because a vast majority of Israeli civilian homes are equipped with bomb shelters, Israel's number of casualties was thankfully lower than might otherwise have been expected," Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Levanon said. "But the commission cannot blame Israel for protecting its civilians and must be taken to task for failing to recognize the difference between one party that strives to protect its citizens through shelters and another which fills its civilian homes with missile stores," he said. The commission, which also included Judge Mohamed Chande Othman of the Tanzanian supreme court and Greek professor Stelios Perrakis, noted that the mandate given them by the council was only to investigate the impact of the war on Lebanon and not to go into what happened in Israel. The Israeli ambassador said Hizbullah "made every effort to create civilian casualties on both sides" while his country's forces "were committed to making every effort to minimize them." "Israel had no desire to injure Lebanese civilians, and it did not spare efforts to spare their lives, by dropping leaflets, giving advance notification of military maneuvers, and repeatedly sending warning messages through radio and television," he said. The commission, however, said it found that "the excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) goes beyond reasonable arguments of military necessity and of proportionality, and clearly failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets, thus constituting a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law," the report said. "In certain cases, such as the deliberate attacks against civilians and civilian properties, attacks against Red Cross ambulances and other protected objects, and the indiscriminate use of cluster munitions, the violations committed by IDF could qualify as serious violations of the laws and customs of war and war crimes," the report said. Ninety percent of the cluster munitions used by the Israelis were fired during the last 72 hours of the conflict, it said and asserted that the weapons were used deliberately to make large areas of fertile agricultural land unusable. Latest estimates are that Israel dropped more than 1 million mini-explosives on Lebanon, it said. The miniature bombs are packed into containers that can be fired by artillery or dropped from aircraft to destroy airfields or tanks and soldiers. A single container typically scatters some 200 to 600 of the mini-explosives as small as a flashlight battery over an area the size of a football field. The high "dud" rate of the small-bombs means that they effectively have become land mines littered across Lebanon, waiting to explode when someone touches them, the report said. Children are especially vulnerable because the tiny bombs are often an eye-catching yellow with small parachutes attached. The European Union, the United Nations and the international Red Cross have joined in the international outcry against cluster bombs in recent months. The weapons, a descendant of the "butterfly bomb" dropped by Nazi Germany on Britain in World War II, were first used by the United States in Southeast Asia, and most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similar weapons were used by Soviet and Russian troops in Angola, Afghanistan and Chechnya, where leftover duds also continue to inflict casualties. The United States opposes a ban on the weapons, maintaining they are valuable for attacking artillery positions or runways, armor columns and missile installations. The report said the conflict in Lebanon resulted in 1,191 deaths and 4,409 injured, with children making up one-third of the casualties. Some 30,000 Lebanese houses were destroyed, and more than 900,000 people fled their homes. "Israel also suffered serious casualties," the commission said, noting reports that 43 civilians were killed and 997 injured and that 300,000 persons were displaced by Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli towns in northern Israel. Rights organizations have accused Hizbullah of also using cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch said in a report published in October that the militant group had fired Chinese-made Type-81 rockets at northern Israel, "the first confirmed use of this particular model of cluster munition anywhere in the world." Israeli officials said a total of 113 cluster bombs landed in Israel during the war, killing one person and injuring dozens. Hizbullah denies it used the weapon. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence ACLU: New Airport Security Screening “Virtual Strip Search” Friday, December 1st, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255 The US government has announced it will test an airport screening system this month that takes X-ray photos of travelers in an attempt to find weapons. The test will be launched at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Manufacturers say the machine blurs or shades images to obscure body parts and medical devices. The American Civil Liberties Union has labeled the X-raying a “virtual strip search.” -------- immigration / refugees Immigrant Worker Spends 13 Months in Louisiana Prison Without Seeing Attorney, Judge Friday, December 1st, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255 In New Orleans, officials have admitted a non-English speaking immigrant worker was “lost” inside the Louisiana prison system for thirteen months. The worker, Pedro Parra-Sanchez, was arrested and charged with assault in October of last year – just six days after moving to New Orleans to work on recovery efforts. Parra-Sanchez passed through three state prisons without speaking to a single defense attorney, prosecutor or judge. He was eventually found not by state officials but by a pro-bono defense attorney acting on a tip from other prisoners. Without his income, Parra-Sanchez’s family was forced to move out of their California home and into a trailer. He was also unable to speak to them often because of the pricy cost of collect calls from prison. Parra-Sanchez finally saw a courtroom Tuesday, where he pleaded innocent to the assault charge. He’s been set free and given permission to return to California to his family. -------- justice High Court Vets False Claims Act Marcia Coyle The National Law Journal December 1, 2006 http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1164896312740 A 17-year-old whistleblower suit by a now 81-year-old former engineer at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has triggered U.S. Supreme Court review of a crucial issue under the fastest growing area of federal civil litigation today, the False Claims Act. In Rockwell International Corp. v. U.S. and ex rel. Stone, No. 05-1272, the justices on Dec. 5 will examine a critical restriction on who can bring so-called qui tam lawsuits under the act. Was Principal Engineer James S. Stone "an original source of the information" that served as the basis for a jury's finding that Rockwell, starting in 1987, violated the act by hiding from the government environmental, safety and health problems related to its processing of nuclear waste? The high court's interpretation of a statute that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. as a lower court judge criticized as unclear will affect not only who qualifies as a qui tam "relator" but also the ability of defendants, often large corporations, to dismiss early these complex and expensive suits. The False Claims Act is becoming the principal tool by which the federal government combats fraud, said FCA practitioner Peter B. Hutt II, a partner at Miller & Chevalier, who filed an amicus brief supporting Rockwell on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation. The FCA provides for treble damages and penalties and a lesser burden of proof than criminal statutes that require proof beyond a reasonable doubt and do not necessarily allow the government to recover as much money, he explained. "Anyone who does business with the federal government and takes federal money in any way is a potential target of an FCA lawsuit either by the federal government directly or by a qui tam plaintiff," said Hutt. "There has been a constant, slow increase in the number of cases, constantly changing theories of liability and new classes of industries as defendants." And where there is alleged fraud by large companies, such as by the most recent target -- pharmaceutical companies -- Hutt said, "The dollars get very large, very quickly." From fiscal years 1987 through 2005, settlements and judgments for the federal government in FCA cases have exceeded $15 billion, of which $9.6 billion, or 64 percent, was for cases filed by whistleblowers under the FCA's qui tam provisions, according to a report last January by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The whistleblowers' share of the qui tam settlements and judgments was more than $1.6 billion during this period. QUI TAM HURDLES The FCA provides that any person who knowingly submits, or causes the submission of, false claims for government funds or property is liable for damages and penalties. Under the FCA, the government can prosecute an action on its own, or a private person may bring a qui tam action. The FCA calls a qui tam plaintiff a "relator," also known popularly as a whistleblower. The government has the right to intervene in the relator's lawsuit. If the government declines intervention, the relator has the right to go forward alone. To prevent so-called parasitic lawsuits by relators who try to capitalize on information about fraud already made public, the FCA prohibits qui tam suits "based upon the public disclosure of allegations or transactions in a criminal, civil, or administrative hearing, in a congressional, administrative, or [Government Accountability Office] report, hearing, audit, or investigation, or from the news media." This "public disclosure" bar has one exception. A qui tam suit that triggers the public-disclosure bar may proceed only if the relator is "an original source of the information." An original source must have "direct and independent knowledge of the information on which the allegations are based," and have "voluntarily provided the information to the Government before filing [a suit] which is based on the information." The original-source exception is at the heart of Rockwell's case in the Supreme Court. It has argued unsuccessfully before a district court and an appeals court that Stone was not an original source because he had no first-hand knowledge of the fraud at issue. "The public-disclosure bar with its original-source exception is the single most litigated issue in the entire False Claims Act jurisprudence," said John T. Boese, partner in the Washington office of New York's Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and author of the leading FCA treatise, Civil False Claims and Qui Tam Actions. The government, he said, intervenes in about 20 percent of all qui tam cases. In the 80 percent proceeding without the government, the original-source issue arises in much more than half, he said, adding, "It also can arise, as in Rockwell, where the government intervenes, and that is more and more true because of the legal fees issue." If a relator can be dismissed on the original-source issue, the defendant doesn't have to pay legal fees and costs if it loses, explained Boese. "You can imagine the amount in a case litigated as actively and vigorously as the Rockwell case," he said, estimating legal fees at up to four times the $4.2 million jury award. "And the government doesn't have to pay the relator a share of what it recovers." Over the years, the courts have expanded what is a public disclosure, and therefore the original-source exception has become more important, said James Moorman, president of Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, which operates a False Claims Act Legal Center and will file an amicus brief supporting Stone. "None other than then Judge Alito ruled in a FCA case that when the government gave a document to a relator who had filed a [Freedom of Information Act] request, it had, in effect, issued a public report triggering the public-disclosure bar," Moorman said. "This astounded everybody, but there it is. "So the original-source rule, which protects you from being bumped out by the public-disclosure bar, is crucial." ORIGINAL SOURCE? Rockwell operated the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy from 1975 through 1989. Stone worked as principal engineer there from November 1980 until March 1986. After Stone was laid off, he informed an FBI agent that environmental crimes had allegedly been committed at Rocky Flats during his period of employment. The FBI agent prepared an affidavit, obtained a search warrant and conducted a search. About a month after the search, Stone filed his qui tam action alleging that in an effort to maximize its receipt of award fees and other payments under its government contract, Rockwell had violated the FCA by falsely representing to DOE that it had complied with applicable environmental, safety and health requirements in its operation of the facility. In the meantime, the government conducted a criminal investigation into Rockwell's management of Rocky Flats. In March 1992, Rockwell pleaded guilty to 10 environmental violations. In 1995, the government intervened in Stone's qui tam action and both filed an amended complaint restating Stone's initial allegations and asserting additional claims. At trial, the primary issue was whether Rockwell had concealed from DOE environmental, safety and health problems related to the processing and storage of saltcrete and pondcrete, two forms of processed toxic waste. Rockwell's counsel, veteran high court litigator Maureen Mahoney, head of the appellate practice at Latham & Watkins from the firm's Washington office, argues that Stone had no direct and independent knowledge that the pondcrete leaked toxic waste or that Rockwell had represented otherwise to DOE because he left Rocky Flats before either the pondcrete or the toxic waste statements were made. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Mahoney contends, incorrectly interpreted the statute's requirement of "direct and independent knowledge" of the later fraud to require only limited knowledge "underlying or supporting" the fraud allegation. "The 10th Circuit expanded that narrow exception so broadly that it effectively swallows the jurisdictional bar," she wrote in court papers regarding the original-source exception. Noting that the federal circuits have adopted varying standards, Mahoney argues, "The best reading is that the relator must have direct and independent knowledge of information sufficient to permit the trier of fact to conclude that a false statement was made to the Government in support of a fraudulent claim for payment." NO PARASITE In its opposition to Supreme Court review and in lower court proceedings, the government argued that Rockwell had understated substantially the significance of Stone's knowledge. He had been instructed in his job not to divulge environmental and other problems to DOE, and he had uncovered through his own efforts design problems for the pondcrete blocks that would result in toxic-waste releases. "Stone's role in this case was therefore very different from that of the 'parasitic' relators at whom the 'public disclosure' bar is directed," the government argued in its opposition brief. Stone's high court counsel, Maria T. Vullo, a partner in New York's Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, said there is no confusion in the circuits on how to interpret the original-source exception. "I think the way the circuits have approached the issue is really a function of how they describe particular facts of the case," she said. "The plain language of the statute is what it is and to the extent Rockwell has a gripe, that's a gripe for the Congress to add some standard that's not existing in the statutory language right now. We will argue that we meet all of Rockwell's new tests." Fried Frank's Boese noted that defendants and the government can question whether someone is an original source at any stage of the litigation because it is a jurisdictional issue. "What Rockwell is arguing very effectively is that Stone's theory of liability was abandoned both by Stone and the government and never presented to the jury," he said. "What was presented was a whole new theory that the government developed in course of its criminal investigation. They argue he was not the original source of the theory of fraud that was eventually successful." But Rockwell is "throwing all kinds of smoke" in front of the Supreme Court, countered Moorman of Taxpayers Against Fraud. The case, he said, is part of a continuing campaign by business and industry "to hobble and undermine" whistleblower lawsuits. "They struck out on their constitutional attacks on the statute and now they're trying to get an interpretation that would do the same thing," said Moorman. -------- POLITICS -------- us politics Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial Robert Fisk: 01 December 2006 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2029238.ece More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq "until the job is complete"? The "job" - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster. History's "deniers" are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades. In 1967, Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser insisted his country was winning the Six Day War hours after the Israelis had destroyed the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. President Carter was extolling the Shah's Iran as "an island of stability in the region" only days before Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution brought down his regime. President Leonid Brezhnev declared a Soviet victory in Afghanistan when Russian troops were being driven from their fire bases in Nangahar and Kandahar provinces by Osama bin Laden and his fighters. And was it not Saddam Hussein who promised the "mother of all battles" for Kuwait before the great Iraqi retreat in 1991? And was it not Saddam again who predicted a US defeat in the sands of Iraq in 2003? Saddam's loyal acolyte, Mohamed el-Sahaf, would fantasise about the number of American soldiers who would die in the desert; George W Bush let it be known that he sometimes slipped out of White House staff meetings to watch Sahaf's preposterous performance and laugh at the fantasies of Iraq's minister of information. So who is laughing at Bush now? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, almost as loyal a retainer to Bush as Sahaf was to Saddam, receives the same false praise from the American president that Nasser and Brezhnev once lavished upon their generals. "I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country," Bush tells Maliki. "He's the right guy for Iraq," he tells us. And the Iraqi Prime Minister who hides in the US-fortified "Green Zone" - was ever a crusader fortress so aptly named? - announces that "there is no problem". Power must be more quickly transferred to Maliki, we were informed yesterday. Why? Because that will save Iraq? Or because this will allow America to claim, as it did when it decided to allow the South Vietnamese army to fight on its own against Hanoi, that Washington is not to blame for the debacle that follows? "One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people." Or so Bush says. "He doesn't have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity." But how can Maliki have any "capacity" at all when he rules only a few square miles of central Baghdad and a clutch of rotting ex-Baathist palaces? About the only truthful statement uttered in Amman yesterday was Bush's remark that "there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq [but] this business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all." Indeed, it has not. There can be no graceful exit from Iraq, only a terrifying, bloody collapse of military power. The withdrawal of Shia ministers from Maliki's cabinet mirror the withdrawal of Shia ministers from another American-supported administration in Beirut - where the Lebanese fear an equally appalling conflict over which Washington has, in reality, no military or political control. Bush even appeared oblivious of the current sectarian map of Iraq. "The Prime Minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," he said. "I agree." But Iraq is already "split into parts". The fracture of Iraq is virtually complete, its chasms sucking in corpses at the rate of up to a thousand a day. Even Hitler must chuckle at this bloodbath, he who claimed in April 1945 that Germany would still win the Second World War, boasting that his enemy, Roosevelt, had died - much as Bush boasted of Zarqawi's killing - while demanding to know when General Wenck's mythical army would rescue the people of Berlin. How many "Wencks" are going to be summoned from the 82nd Airborne or the Marine Corps to save Bush from Iraq in the coming weeks? No, Bush is not Hitler. Like Blair, he once thought he was Winston Churchill, a man who never - ever - lied to his people about Britain's defeats in war. But fantasy knows no bounds. -------- voting Agency: Electronic Voting “Cannot be Made Secure” Friday, December 1st, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255 Here in the United States, a government research agency has concluded paperless electronic voting machines jeopardize voting because they “cannot be made secure.” In what the Washington Post calls the most sweeping condemnation of electronic voting by a federal agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology – NIST -- says votes should be counted independently of the software in voting machines used across the United States. Opponents of electronic voting are urging the Election Assistance Commission to adopt NIST’s recommendations. -------- ACTIVISTS 2,000 Protest US Arrest of Pregnant Iraqi Friday, December 1st, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255 Meanwhile in Baghdad, an estimated two thousand people demonstrated Thursday against the arrest of a pregnant Iraqi woman by US troops. The woman -- Adhraa Hussein Awdas – was reportedly taken from her home in western Baghdad. The marchers issued violent threats and called on the Iraqi government to ban the arrest of Iraqi women by foreign soldiers. Unidentified rally speaker: "Our honour is very precious and we demand the U.S. forces release our sister who was arrested in al-Baqriyah and we want them to release her today. We swear by God if they dont we will all be terrorists against America." Demonstrators said three people were later wounded when Iraqi troops opened fire on their protest. ---- Rumsfeld honored for citizenship amid protests By Jon Hurdle Fri Dec 1, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061202/ts_nm/rumsfeld_dc PHILADELPHIA - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was honored for citizenship by a patriotic organization on Friday as peace protesters outside criticized his role as one of the architects of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Rumsfeld, whose departure was announced by President George W. Bush the day after the Republican defeat in the November 7 midterm elections, was awarded a gold medal by the Union League, a Philadelphia organization founded in 1862 to support President Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War. Rumsfeld's award outraged some Philadelphians who said the Union League should not be honoring the man who headed the Pentagon during the Abu Ghraib scandal involving the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and who played a leading role in what they said was a misguided and poorly executed war. "This man is responsible for my son's death, and this place of wealth and privilege has given him an award," said Celeste Zappala, whose son Sgt. Sherwood Baker, a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, was killed in Baghdad in April 2004. Patricia Tobin, a spokeswoman for the Union League, said only six out of 3,100 members objected to the award, and that the ceremony, with an expected attendance of some 700 people, was a sellout. "That's very good for an event here," she said. The event was closed to the media. Outside the ornate Union League building in central Philadelphia, about 25 protesters carrying placards saying: "Rumsfeld War Criminal" and "Rumsfeld Award Demeans Union League," shouted, "Shame" and "End the war" at tuxedo-clad guests as they arrived for the event. "It's a mistake to honor him," protester Tom Roberts said. "I think he created a situation where Abu Ghraib could happen easily." The Pentagon made no official comment on the award.